Asshole Whose Entire Career Based On Appreciating The Lowbrow Wants To Pull Up The Ladder

You like the Klosterman, kids? We tend to fall on the dubious side of the line. Don't get us wrong, we have a certain admiration for him: That whole low-culture-loving earnestness shtick was a terrific seam for a writer to mine back at the beginning of this young century, and we don't begrudge him any of the success he's achieved working that routine in the ground. Still, there's something about him that sort of bugs us, something that we think is perfectly encapsulated in his latest column. Chuck discusses Snakes on a Plane, the blog-driven movie that he takes pains to alert you he has yet to see. SoaP vexes Chuck; yea, it causes much gnashing of the teeth from his corner. What bothers Chuck is not the fact that the movie is being made, but how the movie is being made: based on the input of (wait for it) bloggers.

Bloggers, you see, don't know what they want. They are sheep, the great unwashed who, while they may be able to express their opinions on websites that twenty people (including, apparently, studio executives, but never mind that) read, are still, in Chuck's world, unfocused consumers. They don't have a column in, say, Esquire, that validates them as cultural tastemakers.

Even worse, they have the audacity to appreciate a movie for its badness. Everyone knows that a true appreciation of bad things is only appropriate if an attempt were made at the outset for the work of art (e.g., Ratt's first album) to actually be good, and no one knows this better than the man who wrote the book in the first place... Chuck Klosterman.

Like we said, we think Chuck's ability to make his bones on a whole counter-intuitive "I love metal, me" profile was a brilliant choice. We can understand how he might be threatened by the ever-growing democratization of opinion. After all, he's worked hard and long to get where he is, and it's got to be tough to feel those million other voices breathing down your neck, Esquire column or no.

But us? We just want to see those motherfuckin' snakes on that motherfuckin' plane.

The "Snakes on a Plane" Problem [Esquire]

[Photo: Matt Dentler]

Earlier:If There Is Really Is A Cult of Klosterman, We'd Like to Provide the Kool-Aid